Storytime
by Garmonbozia
Summary: The downside to being a Z-list children's TV celebrity (or one of the downsides, anyway) is that you will always be the first person your friends think of when they get stuck with babysitting. Rich Brooke learns this lesson the hard way. - Pure fluff, because I was in a bad mood. One-shot.


Listen to me, because there is one thing you must understand before I begin, or nothing that follows will seem wondrous. I was raised in the arse-end of Dublin, on a street which quite literally had a Catholic church on either end. The parish border was round about Number 24. And, not to give anything away, but I remember the days when the shops weren't even allowed to open on a Sunday. It is, therefore, no personal weakness of character that Sundays make me lazy. If there's a job on or something needs sorted, of course I'll get it done. But I don't like it. Years after all semblance of religion has been expunged from my grateful soul, I still don't like to do much moving on a Sunday. My nearest associates know this. They know better than to come near the flat on a Sunday. Even if it's life or death, as it occasionally is, they know to phone ahead. Sundays, we all go our separate ways, ignore each other, do our own things.

Are you following? Sundays are a dead zone. Sundays, ironically, are more sacred now than they were when I was a bored child.

So imagine my surprise, dear and constant reader, my confusion, my _disgust_, when on this one particular Sunday I happen to hear a knock at the door. Not only is this a major infringement of one of the most basic rules in my carefully controlled life, but whatever is on the other side of the door can't be good. Can't even be somebody I know. They all have far too much respect for their own skin.

I check everything very carefully before I go to the door, and make sure I'm armed. There's eight inches of solid steel kept in the coat stand for just such occasions. And then I look out the spyhole and realize it's only Moran. I do, however, keep hold of the pipe. Might still use it. Depends entirely what happens when I open this door.

Too pissed off for pleasantries I skip direct to, "How good is this going to have to be? Can't wait to hear this one, Moran, really can't."

See that? See all my restraint? I didn't even swear at him once. That's nothing to do with how deep childhood traumas run. That's just me trying to be decent until I know he's definitely not... Actually, I can't think of anything that could acceptably bring him to my door on a Sunday afternoon. Nevertheless, I'm being very dignified. Good thing too, very lucky. Because when I open the door, it's not just Moran standing there. No, Moran's got company.

Not dangerous, acceptable-on-a-Sunday company, though. He's got a small person with him. It's down around his knees. A child. I mean, I know what a child is, obviously. I've worked with enough of them, these last few months. But I rarely ever see them out here, in real life. Mixed race, curly black hair, about four or five, staring up at me with big dark eyes and gasping.

"...Moran, is there something you need to tell me?"

All I get out of him is an admonishing look. He reaches one hand down behind the little boy and brings him forward. "_Rich_," he says, with emphasis, so I know who I'm supposed to be, "this is Peter. Peter's a big fan of yours."

I take a second to remember what Mr Brooke is like on set, so I'll know what to do. This will all be a lot easier if I deal with it as him. So there's that second's hesitation and then, "Well, you had both better come in, then." I stretch a hand out to this little Peter person, but he doesn't want to take it. This is different to on-set. That doesn't happen on-set. They pick the right kids before they get as far as me, you see. But, never one to be defeated, I try again, "And what has you out and about with Sebastian here, Peter?"

No response. Eventually, shaking the little hand in his, Moran answers for him. "Daddy got called into work, didn't he?"

The part of me which is still myself is still trying to figure out how this happened and asks, "Do Daddy and I know each other?"

Moran takes his usual seat in the armchair, which is a normal and comforting thing for him to do. What is neither normal nor comforting is him hauling the lad up to sit on his knee. Still staring at me. Chewing the tip of his finger now with a silly, uncontrolled sort of smile on his face. "Daddy is Sebastian's special friend, isn't he, little man?" Then, to me, over the little man's head, "He's Tom's son-from-a-previous."

Back at him, quietly, "Who's Tom?"

Which buys me no more than another glare, "Seriously? I've been seeing the guy for six weeks and... _Seriously_, J-... Rich? Anyway, Daddy got called in for an emergency and well, we didn't want Mummy talking about us now, did we? So I said I'd take him and you're on _Tikkabilla_, mate. You don't need that maths masters-"

"Doctorate."

"-Doctorate of yours to put it together. Try your new _Storytime_ script on him, call it a rehearsal." Aha, do you see what he's trying to do there? He's trying to make it sound like there's something in this for me. Make it sound like a good idea and I'll be all over it. But he's forgetting one thing; it's still Sunday. If he'd brought the sprog round yesterday, when I would have sacrificed a black rooster for a distraction from a particularly awkward bit of planning, oh, God, yes. In a heartbeat. Give him here, I'll talk his little sticky-outty ears off with stories. But this is not a Saturday, it is a Sunday, and I don't like working a Sunday. All this 'rehearsal' business, that sounds suspiciously like work. Moran is, however, oblivious to all this. He jogs the lad on his knee and says to him, "You'd like that, wouldn't you? Get a story? Like on telly?" Then lifts his eyes back to me and says, with all the promise of leaving, "And then we'll go and get a McFlurry and that'll kill another hour." Mouths the words, _One hour_.

I am almost inclined to give in. It's not like a defeat, really; Moran is working for it. And the kid's stupid, unknowing smile has split into a real grin at the mention of stories and telly. He's not like the kid's on-set. He's never been to a drama class. He's never been given an inflated sense of his own individuality and worth by some speed-freak hippy life-coach recommended amongst the pushy dads and stage mums I see every day. He's an alright kid, even if he is apparently _mute_...

And then there's another knock at the door.

This time, I have Moran to share my suspicions. He knows what he did today was wrong, only did it because he believes these are extenuating circumstances. Knows nobody would ever (usually) dare... He nods out the door, asking if I want him to go. I shake my head and return, for a second, to the CBeebies theatrics of Richard Brooke. For the sake of the boy, you understand. "I wonder who that could be. I'll just go and find out."

And I make sure I'm well out of sight before I pick up the bar again. And again, I end up keeping it in my hand, because this time when I check through the spyhole, it's _Danielle_ stood there. Now, granted, she looks distressed, looks agitated, but still -

I'm starting to feel very put-upon, on this one day out of seven I wouldn't usually stand for it.

So, once again, I open the door. And it's almost on instinct that I look down. Good instincts too. Another small person. This one not quite so small, about hip high with Dani in heels. Long blonde pigtails, narrow blue eyes, wearing a lilac Hello Kitty backpack. "No," I say to Danielle. "No, I'm hallucinating. Nobody would give you a child. Not one they expected to get back in the same condition."

"She's my cousin," she bites, "not a pawned ring." Where Moran argued his case at the door, Dani pushes on past me into the hall. Her little charge doesn't follow right away. Looking up at me. Not staring the way Peter did, just looking, with unashamed interest, and her little mouth hangs slightly open.

"You're off the telly," she says eventually. "I'm too old for _Tikkabilla_ now but you're off the telly."

What kind of an opening is that? She's too grown up and sophisticated to be interested in me, but she does recognize me, and she just thought she'd let me know. Given their polar opposite features, I might have questioned if she was really related to Danielle, but after that sort of blunt, brazen chat...

Dani steps up and hisses at my ear, "I've got her for the day and we're out of Scooby Doo DVDs already and I can't really have her around the flat."

"Because it's a health hazard?"

"After a fashion. The Petrova diamond's still there."

"What?" I balk. "That was to be fenced days ago."

"It's a long story, I didn't want to bother you with it, and can we please not use words like 'fenced' when I have to hand her back to my aunt at five o'clock?"

I will talk exactly as I please in my own bloody home, thank you very much... But Dani is lost, drifting without even Moran's basic parental instincts, and she looks to me with pleading and desperation behind her eyes. "Oh, come in, the two of you. This little one can keep Peter company." While Danielle is wondering aloud who Peter is, I lower myself to the little blonde person's level, "And what's your name, princess?"

"My name's Clea Marberry and I'm not going to be a princess anymore because you have to marry a prince and all the princes are ugly."

Danielle stretches out her hand. Clea won't take it. She wants mine, whether I want to give it or not, and wants to pull me along with her while she looks around my home. Maybe it's the rejection, but Danielle asks her, "Who told you all the princes are ugly?"

"I saw them in Mummy's _Heat_."

"Oh, that's just the British ones. Have you looked at your options in the Middle East?" And when I glare at her she shrugs, "What? I'm making sure she knows what her alternatives are."

"What's the Middle East?" Clea says

"Don't listen to that woman, she's just telling really stupid jokes." Then I mouth a warning to said-comedienne, _One hour_. She nods, crosses her heart, joins her hands in a mockery of thankful prayer.

Clea drags me as far as the living room before she lets go of me. She's seen Moran with his own miniature human and I'm not the most interesting thing about anymore. She walks straight up to Moran's knees and asks. "Who are you?"

"Well, my name is Sebastian and this is Peter. C'mon, Peter, say hello to Clea." Peter manages to open and close one chubby hand a couple of times, a sort of wave I suppose.

Clea looks at him with her head on one side. Addressing Moran without looking at him, "Can he not talk?"

"Of course he can."

"Well, why doesn't he? I don't think he can." And then, quick as you like, her hand flashes out and pinches Peter's ankle. Just a little bit of it, but enough so it stays red for a good long minute. Peter makes one little noise before he buries his face in Sebastian's shoulder. Clea says, "Oh, okay." Mystery solved, it seems. Case closed.

Behind me I can feel Dani desperately crushing down laughter. But Moran, cuddling and comforting his little charge, glares at her with such venom that she remembers herself. "Oi!" and she pulls Clea away by the wrist, "That's not on. You don't pinch people."

"But I wanted to see if he could actually talk."

"I know, and as techniques go, it was sound. Pain is a powerful motivator, especially when you want people to talk. But you just don't do it. It's not nice." For a moment, I am overcome by the thought of what horror might be wrought upon an unsuspecting society if Danielle Mies ever unleashed spawn of her own into it. It is then that I make my decision. I have to do something. The stakes are too high; there are kids involved.

Besides, I have a professional reputation to uphold. One of them can't express his respect and the other has outgrown me at the tender age of what, six? But that's irrelevant as elephants... That's quite good, actually... Wonder if there's some way I could get that onto the show.

"Right," I announce, and clap my hands together. Clea looks, that dull, temporary interest, like a puppy. Peter lifts his crumpled little face up enough to see me. "Who wants a story?"

Peter's all for it. He actually nods this time, which is the closest we've come to communication. Clea is not so enthused, but I'm leaving that in Dani's hands, as I go to fetch a script I didn't intend even looking at until Tuesday. Three stories on it for this week. Should kill a hour, if I can keep them interested.

Out of the other room; "_Told_ you I'm too old now."

"Oh, totally, little love, I know you are. But think about it. He's off the telly. That's, like, famous, and you're getting, like, a personal performance. That makes you _nearly_, like, famous."

Clea gasps, "Like going out with Harry from One Direction?"

A long, long pause. Whether it's pride or disgust Danielle has to swallow, I don't know, but it's choking her. "Yeah, love. Exactly like."

By the time I get back, Dani's sat back in the corner of the sofa with one foot hitched up, and Clea is leaning expectantly, lovingly, on her knee, watching my triumphal return. Moran is coaxing little Peter's head up, turning him round to see. He's looking a bit happier again. Suspicious of Clea, and with every right to be, but happier.

It's not to annoy the kids that I make my next joke. It's to annoy those who have pushed me to this on a Sunday. "That's if everybody _wants_ a story. We don't have to. I could put this away again if nobody could be bothered." And while the two so-called adults in the room glare death at me for even suggesting it, Clea gives up and endless torrent of protests. Peter even jumps down from Moran's knee and comes over, shaking hsi curly head. "Oh, well, I suppose we'd better get about it then, hadn't we? Come over here, settle yourself, princess and... Here, Clea, is Peter not ugly enough to be a prince?"

Which shuts our little proto-bitch up, finally, into a blushing, mumbling bundle who stays determinedly close to Dani for a bit.

And so it begins. I just keep telling myself it's a rehearsal. And telling myself to be professional when all I want to do is slap the smirks off Moran and Danielle's faces. They've never watched Rich work, I don't think. Maybe a couple of clips, for giggle. But out here in the real world, they are scrupulously kept away from rehearsal time. It's the silly voices and the face pulling. There's a science to that, y'know, about communicating with children in broad, emotional brushstrokes. It's not like it's just something I do to be funny.

Tell you what, though, they stop smirking when they see the effect on the kids. Peter's all smiley, chewing his fingers again (apparently how he expresses everything from affection to mild trepidation). Clea slides forward, reaching over my arm to follow the words on the page with her fingertip, lips moving.

Shaking pins and needles from where the child was leaning, Dani gets up, says very quietly that she'll just step out and make coffee. "Shut up!" Clea snaps. Even Peter manages to make his finger chewing momentarily sinister. She doesn't come back, when the coffee's made. Moran goes to her instead, slipping out, knowing better than to speak a single word.

In between stories, Peter tugs my sleeve. "Yes, little man, what is it?" So he pulls himself up on the back of the couch, which is a feat and struggle for which he must be given his pudgy-legged dues, and uses real English words to whisper a question in my ear. "What's she like really?" I echo, and he nods. "Well, really, seriously... honestly... without covering anything up, cross my heart and hope to die... and you know I wouldn't lie to you, both of you-" By which point they've started giggling, so I can continue, "Tikka is the very friendliest dragon I have ever worked with. That's what she's like really. She is _lovely_. And you have to be careful with dragons, especially purple ones, because they can be divas. They have a real temper, the purple ones."

"Yeah," Clea says, "But Tikkabilla's just a puppet, isn't it?"

"Who told you that? Did you not know? Tikkabilla is the little girl dragon at the BBC. That's her granddad that works on _Merlin_. Her big cousin, like your Danielle, does _Doctor Who_. Any big dragonny alien like that, that's her dressed up. That's what Tikka wants to do when she's older."

After the second story, I leave them for an interval and go to join in with that coffee. Need one. Pouring it, I stab a finger at Moran, "You will pay for this in bullets," then at Danielle, "And _you_, why is the Petrova diamond still in your flat."

"I want to keep it. Not important. More important; how are you good with kids?" She says this with complete fascination, utter shock.

Moran leans into my eye line, next to her, nodding in agreement. "Aside from occasionally demonstrating the drunken mental age of one-" he starts. Then he _stops_, because he likes life.

"Not to oversimplify," Danielle picks up, "But in essence you make your living arranging murders and the like. How are you good with kids?"

"I'm not. Brooke is. It's all an act. You two are losing sight of that."

They're not even listening. Dani is actually asking how the first story ended, since she missed it in here and Moran is filling her in on details even I don't remember and it was less than half an hour ago. "You should just be on TV," she breathes, after the Happily-Ever. "To hell with the rest of this. You're wasting your talents."

"Moran, slap her for me, would you? I'm going back to _your_ babysitting for another," and I check my watch, "Thirteen minutes and twelve seconds. Then they're yours again, as shall my Sunday be mine, agreed?"

I wait for nods, for agreement, for _promises_, Christ's sake... Then I go back.

They're drawing. Supplies from Clea's not-so-bottomless bag of _Scooby Doo_ DVDs. I'm not being funny or anything, but if either of them gets ink on _anything_ in here, Rich will leave the building. Jim will be back. He will be most unamused again. Peter's tongue is sticking out the corner of his mouth, and you can tell he wants to be more precise than his current motor skills allow, colouring with jagged lines of purple marker. Clea is more skilled, carefully adding black outlines to something carefully shielded behind her arm. I'm not allowed to see. She finishes it and folds it into perfect quarters, and keeps tight hold of it. And then I try out the last story on them. Self-penned, don't you know. I know; I'm a polymath, a renaissance man, you're so impressed. No need to flatter my ego, it knows how you feel.

I tell them the story of Sir Boast-A-Lot, and how you should never go about blowing your own trumpet. That'll get you into heaps of trouble. The thing I love about kids? They're such simple creatures; nobody calls me out for ripping off The Boy Who Cried Wolf.

Dani and Moran think I don't know they're listening at the door, during that one. And when it's finished and they come in to collect their various embryo people, I pretend I didn't notice them at all.

"Time to go," Dani announces, packing up Clea's belongings.

"Do we have to?" the girl moans. "Your flat's no fun and it's fun here and it's only, like, an _hour_ until I have to go home."

"Well, we're not going to my flat, we're going to Miccy-D's, but if you don't want to come, I'm sure that's alr-"

"_Nononononono-_"

"Yeah, I thought so. Say thank you very much to Rich, please." She doesn't say thank you. She walks up and gives me the neatly folded picture, but I'm not allowed to open it until after they're all gone. And knowing her family, having gotten to know the little girl herself in the last hour, I'm happy with that. Some things deserve to be burned in privacy, away from jackals like her cousin, who would laugh.

"Your aunt," I ask Dani, aside, confidential, "Would she rent her out to us, do you think? Bit of business?"

"_Yeah, _you're not hiring my six-year-old cousin," is the definite reply. I accept it. It was only an idea anyway. She pats Clea into her backpack and ushers her out into the hall.

Moran meanwhile is helping Peter into his coat, having to take a piece of paper off him to do it. He looks down at it and _aw_s over something. Then points at another corner saying, "But who's this?"

I lean over. It's a crude, stick-figure representation of a man in a chair, and next to him, on the arm, is a purple blob with two yellow triangles sticking out of it. Wings. I slap Moran's shoulder. "It's me and Tikka, you-" Stop _just_ short of calling him something foul in front of the child... "Eejit..."

The _aw_, by the way, was for the other three stick figures. Two tall ones, one with his face coloured in brown, and a little one in between with curly hair. Handy labelling marks them out as Daddy, Peter and 'Sabasdyun', whoever that poor sod is.

Anyway, cut a long story short I get _rid_ of them all, _long-last_, packed off in their cloud of fast-food induced excitement. Normal Sunday service can be resumed. There will be peace in the valley for me, again. I make sure they all took everything with them. I put the steel bar back in the coat stand. Spray a bit of Febreze about; the kids didn't smell, but Dani painted her fingernails in the kitchen and everything is acetone-sharp. . And then I fix myself a bit of lunch and go to put my feet up in front of the telly. I'm an hour behind on the lunch-and-telly front. I've got catching up to do.

But when I put one foot up on the coffee table, as is my wont, as is a man's right in his own home, it lands not on marble, but on paper.

Clea's drawing.

A proper Sunday can't happen again until I've gotten rid of it. So, taking it between thumbs and forefingers, at the corners, I peel it open –

- Then swear and immediately cast it as far from me as an unfolded sheet of paper will fly. Which isn't very far, really. It lands face-up on the floor and stares at me, sickening, horrible... Christ, I need to call Dani, tell her the child needs looked at. She's definitely _her_ family, but she needs her head checking out before this goes any farther. Ugh, my God...

This time when I pick it up I do it through my pulled-down cuff. I am taking I to the sink, to be burned, to be gone to ash and washed away down the plughole forever away from me. But... But the kid drew it. And she didn't have to, and it was how she said thank you. I don't really want to burn it. I wish it had never existed, but that's a pipe dream. In this world, as things are, it's real and I have to deal with it. Can't burn it, don't wnat to see it and oh, dear sweet Jesus, cannot risk Danielle ever finding it... I'll put it in the safe, with petty cash. Revulsion might stop me dipping into those funds so often.

Oh God, such an awful image... and out of the mind of a _child_, no less...

It's a picture (and, it has to be said, a much more accomplished one than Peter's) of two people inside an oversized pink love heart, two faces leaning in, about to kiss. One with long black hair and one of them patently me. Handily labelled, so that I can't even pretend it's something else, 'Rich' and '_Dani_'.

And to think I wanted the little monster to _work_ with us.


End file.
